Its been several months since Colorado Parks and Wildlife released 10 gray wolves captured in Oregon with hopes of reestablishing a population and improving the Centennial State's landscape.
This week, one of the wolves turned up dead in Larimer County.
Federal wildlife officials are investigating but they say it appears the wolf died of natural causes.
The Colorado Sun reporter Tracy Ross joined KUNC's Michael Lyle, Jr. to provide an update on the incident that has also sparked conversation on whether the reintroduction of wolves was a mistake.
"That sentiment has been there since before wolves were released, at least by some portion of the 49% of Coloradans in 13 of the state's 64 counties that voted against it," said Ross. "But among many ranchers specifically, I know they're wishing the state didn't go through with introduction. And that's partly because after what seemed like a pretty quiet few months in terms of wolves killing livestock, some of the Colorado wolves have keyed into cattle on ranches in Grand County, where two of them killed five cows in a week this month."
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Ross said Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado Department of Agriculture have been working with ranchers to prevent another attack from happening in the future.
"They're helping to put up things like fladry, which is a kind of flagging on fences that apparently, like, tells wolves to stay away, and flashing lights around their cattle," said Ross. "Then there's discussion on the Facebook group 'Wolf Tracker' about which guard dogs are best to use and if donkeys are a good deterrent, which I think they have been proven to be in the past."
Ross also said state wildlife officials are monitoring the other wolves' activity with special devices to track their whereabouts in the region.
"They say that two of the 10 collars placed on wolves translocated in December are no longer providing signals to CPW biologists," said Ross. "But they say that those animals with the failed collars are traveling with other animals with functional collars, so CPW can still keep track of them."
Meanwhile, CPW has stated it will not kill the wolf blamed for those calf deaths in Grand County. Their GPS data suggests that wolf is the mate of a denning female, and that exempts it from "lethal control."
